What constitutes duplicate content on a page?

[steve_linn]

I am working on SEO for a Shopify store.  Their products are very similar, hence the pages are so similar that Moz shows them as duplicate content.  The only difference in the product pages is the title and model number.  I am going to "go for the gold" and try re-writing all the product descriptions.  It's incredibly difficult due to the products being nearly identical with just a minor variation.  I know I could go down the road of just creating variants --- but the customer is not down for that.

Here's my question:  what constitutes duplicate content?  80% of the content, 90%????

If I can going to re-write the descriptions, what should I aim for?

Thank you!

[beaupedraza]

Hey Steve,

First question: How similar are these products? Are they the same but with color/trim/size differences? Have you had the conversation about canonicalization or are they not that similar?

Regarding duplication: I wouldn't look at it from a percentage standpoint, and if I did, I'd aim for 0-20% duplication with the assumption that 20% dupe was due to sentence beginnings and common intro phrases such as "If you're looking for....", which even as I look at that, I'd want to fix (because they're ubiquitous). Focus on the five Ws (who, what, where, when, why and how) and answer each one of those the best that you can, with the product's uses and why each model is different in mind.

Is there a way you can discuss the different use cases for each model number? Highlight benefits and applications? When people look for your product, what else are they searching for or concerned about?

Beau

[CandymanKen]

Hi-

I wouldn't being to guess the % needed, but I can tell you one way that we try to get around the issue with similar products. We added a "short description" section with bullet points to highlight all the questions people might ask about the product and in there we are very specific about color, shape, flavor etc. When we have similar products (say different flavored gummi bears) we list both basic facts about the product that are all the same (i.e. size, how many per bag) as well as listing the other attributes that are unique to that product (i.e. banana flavored, yellow colored) and that seems to be enough to keep us from a duplicate content penalty. It's also nice because it cuts down customer questions.

Just a thought

Ken

[MattRoney]

Hi Steve! I'm not positive what Google considers duplicate, but I can tell you that our tools flag pages as duplicate when ≥90% of the source code (including content) matches. It's likely that we're more sensitive to it than Google is, which is intentional.

Out of curiosity, are you trying to rank both of these pages?

[steve_linn]

I am not trying to rank both pages - I am trying to create unique pages for each product.  The complicated part is that they are tile.  So a tile is made of the same material, same process for making them, used in the same application, and have the same size.  So there are 1000 tiles that are very similar.  The only slight variance is their color, part number and potentially if they have a pattern on them - such as a flower.  Inside the set, there may be 100 tiles that have flowers.  so it gets a bit difficult to write a description when so many things are the same about each tile.

[MattRoney]

If you're not trying to rank, then you may not need to prioritize fixing this.

Duplicate content isn't a penalty; it's a risk. The risk is that more than one page on your site will seem appropriate in response to a particular search query and Google might 1) rank the wrong one, or 2) "decide" it's not clear and rank neither. If these aren't pages you'd expect or want to show up in search results anyway, then you can feel free simply to put together a page that'll provide the best experience for the user.